Copilot Mastermind 02/23/2025

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to another copilot mastermind. We'll go ahead and jump right in. We got 10 questions came in today. Let me see if I can make this a little bit different here today. See if I can't zoom in. There we go. Cool. All right, let's get started. First question is from Adam Burkett. Pristine green lawn and landscaping. What have you found to be the best offer to include on market materials for mowing? Percentage off, a first, second visit, free first, second complimentary bonus service of another kind. We can redeem some sort of lead magnet or something else. What have you found to have the best conversion? The challenging part when it comes to having an offer is it's very, very time specific. And so what I mean by that is like, one week it could do really well, and the next week it could do very poorly. The reason for that is usually the weather. So especially when you're coming to mowing, you have about five to six weeks of peak demand. And so if you miss that by a week, a great offer could do poorly and a pathetic offer could do well. That's why it's very difficult for me to say which one's better or the best. I will say I usually don't like giving percentages off. I like giving things for free, because people know that free is not something that can go on forever and they don't expect it in the future. So I usually like giving away things for free, whether that be a free core aeration. I like doing things that have a lower margin or a lower cost of goods sold. So, for example, a core aeration, it literally will take you five minutes to do a pretty large lawn. So. So your only cost of the cost of labor and you already have the equipment, for example, or you're already gonna rent the equipment. If you're already gonna do, say 40 or 50 core aerations, might as well add another 10 or 15 in there. The cost to you extra if you're renting the equipment is literally just the labor, which is probably a couple hours, but then you get all these new mowing customers. So something like that. Free is good. The least amount of friction you have towards that. So, for example, if they allow it on your first, second, third visit immediately, versus, like, hey, after 10 visits, then we will give you a free corporation. Now you're reducing the. The offer. You know how sexy the offers. And so it's just. It's a trade off of how much do you want to give for the offer and how good do you want to make it, make it risk free, make it where is instantaneous. Those are things that are going to make the offer much more appealing. So it's like how much are you willing to give for it? And if you think instantaneous, like you have a free corporation and new mowing customer, there's the chance that they will just leave after the first or second visit. If you're doing it right away, there is a chance. But I do, I genuinely believe it happens way less than people think. And if it happens, you chalk it up to a cost of marketing. And so it depends on what you're, how aggressive you are and are you in growth mode or you're in profit mode? If you're in growth mode, you're going to go very, very heavy on the offer. You're going to make it very immediate. You're not going to create any sort of friction or fine print or you have to stay for five visits or anything like that. If you're going in growth mode just knowing that some people might misuse it, but I think less people than you might think and even if 1 in 10 or 1 in 5 misused it, it's going to feel like everyone's misusing it. But it's really not that bad if 20% of the customers take one mowing visit because you said, hey, if you join our service you get a free corporation. Yes, there are going to be some people that misuse that, but it's going to be less from a percentage perspective than you might think. Most people are not going to set up mowing service, put their card information and file. They'll go through the whole nine yards of setting up service and then cancel. And you have for or two services once you get the corporation done, for example. So I think most of us hedge way too much on the offer. I will say that make the like make the offer so good. It's like that that's crazy. Like you're giving me one $99 correction for free. If I just sign up for A$50 mo for example, the better the offer, the better the the response rate will be pristine. Greenland Green lawn and landscape. What are your thoughts on saying a professional referral program for existing customers and for other service providers and adj? I don't love referrals because they are hard to keep track of customers who come from different referral individuals or companies. But do you think it would be worth it to set up a form workflow that can be used for referrals and pay per lead that comes in or do you think it would be too much of a hassle to manage. Instead, just focus on goodwill referrals where we will refer your company for your service in return. You can refer our company for our service that you don't offer. Yeah. This is the reason I don't like this last and I kind of goodwill referrals. It's very difficult for me to get any goodwill from the referral. What I mean by that is someone calls in, they're looking for chemical treatments, for example. We don't offer chemical treatments at my locations. So as they call so and so, they're awesome. Give them their phone number. They call so and so. They never, they never say like hey, Augusta Lawn Care told us to call you. And even if they do, it's a, it's a low percentage and so there's very good will transfer and furthermore they, they, I have no guarantee they're actually going to call that other provider. This is actually like the whole premise behind, behind Augusta Leads. Everyone thinks it's like we're trying to make a bunch of money and stuff. It's. It's more a matter of I want to be able to actually have a system for doing these referrals. But it is not easy. It is not easy to keep track of everything. Have service areas, which services your, all of your providers offer when they change service areas, when they change services. What if all of a sudden they go out of business? What if they stop being licensed? What if they're not insured anymore? So sometimes this is more of a pain in the butt than anything to manage. And remember, when you do a referral to a specific person, you are co signing on their quality. And so what you're talking about here is exactly what, why we set up Augusta Leads. And if you don't know that is just Augusta leads dot com. It has a few minute video on there. It's essentially exactly what you're talking about. And it's difficult because if you refer a a service and the customer goes and uses that service and it's bad, there's goodwill, there's negative goodwill that's associated with your brand. And so you've got to actually constantly be vetting anyone that you're referring. But it's very nice to have a tracker, a way to track these instead of just like randomly giving leads to people they don't know yet they're coming from you because very few people actually mention your name. And you don't even know if they do go to that other person because they might go call Someone else. It's in your mind, like, I'm giving all these leads to someone. You talk to them like, yeah, one person mentioned you last month and you're like, no, every week I'm giving a whole bunch to you because you can't track whether or not they actually went to that person and that person can't track whether or not they're coming from you. So it, that's why we know we, we set up this program for Augusta. But the reason we can make sense of it is because we have a whole department and it's for all these locations and there's hundreds of leads that come in, you know, every week versus, you know, for you, it might be a couple times a week. So it might not be worth setting up a professional, like actual system for this until I would say you're getting five to ten referrals every week. That's when usually I would see it's like, hey, it's starting to become worth it to actually set up some sort of a system. So I know who I'm sending them to and be able to create get paid per lead. And more importantly, if you start having a dollar and cents associated with it, the, the way that that lead is treated by the person you refer is very different because if like they're getting all these leads coming in and it just so happens the person that you referred over also calls them, they're getting similar treatment to everyone else that is calling them. But if they paid for the lead, they will get a better treatment. They actually follow up with them. They'll get to their, their estimate faster. So there's a lot of associated benefits. But I would say until you're getting quite a few of these every, every week, I would probably stick with the goodwill for now. I would try my best to track it so you can, you can actually know where your leads are going when do refer. So that way you can confidently know who you're referring to and if it's actually good for your brand. So.

Rich. Okay, is there a waiting list in chemical tracking? All right, so the wait list is next on the board after the customer portal. So a lot of this stuff is going to be coming down next couple months and the first thing that you'll be seeing is the estimates inside the customer portal.

And that's coming very shortly. So probably next time you see me, that will be out. Sam Gustin from Troops Mowing. We have implemented instant pricing on our website. Prior to having instant pricing, close rates was a core KPI of ours. Our target for close rate ratio was 30 to 40% for our profit mode location and 60% for our growth mode locations. Now with instant pricing close rate is not going to be as reliable. Can you please do a deep dive on how to leverage the available data from an instant pricing form to see how well we are doing At Blue Collar Summit you mentioned to just track how many approved estimates there were. Can you please give a lot more insight into this? Yes, because if you're doing instant pricing where they're actually going to have to accept an estimate, you're almost gonna have a hundred percent close ratio on those. And so what you're, what you're, the reason you do instant pricing is for the, the all the jobs that you're going to win for the 16 hours out of the day and for the weekend that you are usually not open and that they would just go to voicemail or they would just submit the form and submit a form. Five other companies on that weekend, like there are people every single Saturday and Sunday submitting forms and they're going to do with five other companies because they're not going to get an immediate response. They're going to hit yours, get a price and accept. So that's what we're hoping for. That's the positive part about instant pricing. The negative side is that if they go and see the price like I don't really like it, they're not going to click accept. They're not, they usually don't click decline. And so you're just going to have like basically 100% acceptance of anyone that submitted the form. And so I want to track, I would recommend Sam is track last year's accepted estimates versus this year's accepted estimates. I believe it will go up because the upside of selling 247 and doing on the weekends and when you're closed will outweigh the few people that you might miss out on the lead because, excuse me, they didn't like the price and they just like exited out of the page because that will happen.

And so in terms of how to leverage the available from instant pricing for sale we'll be doing. Yes, there's one way you could do this and that is you could have it where they have to submit their information, click a button and then that button then takes them to another page which gets shows them the price. Be careful with this because when you make it where they have to submit information like their contact information and then click submit, there's a big drop off there that don't even see the price. So we made the decision that hey, you're gonna fill your information. You don't have to click anything because people know as soon as they click submit that they're giving you their information away. And so we made it based on conversion ratios and people come filling out the form. I would rather every single person see the price and then be able to make a decision versus make them go to a different page, collect the contact information and show them the price. So there's a few things we're trying to do to kind of work around this because it's also security, it's also page load time, it's also conversion rate. But ultimately everyone will. Sometimes some people that are really, really in the weeds, like wanting every single lead will not want instant pricing because they lose out on the people that decline estimate. However, you are also losing out if you don't give instant pricing before making them submit the information. You're also losing out on the person that's like, I don't want to submit my information to this person. I don't know where my page is about to go. Like this is, this is, this is legit. Like drop off on conversion. If you ask for people's address, ask for their phone number, etc. And then ask them to click a submit button, there's a huge drop off there. They don't even see the price. I want the price to be seen.

So there's two schools of thought here. One is get every single lead, even if they want to decline. I do that by putting their information and then asking for submit. That way I can actually extract that data and then they go to a different page to see the pricing. There's such a big drop off there. That drop off is greater than what we see in terms of decline once they see the price. So there's two schools that's out there. I've seen it work at both sides. If you're very, very much want every single lead, you'd probably make it where they have to go to different page. But I'm trying to maximize the number of accepted jobs. So you notice in like Cure two is when I talk about. Sorry, yeah, Tier two inside the workshop is more and better. I want more accepted jobs. I don't want more leads. More accepted jobs. This is specifically this. This one root cause is why in the workshop Cure 2 is named more and better accepted jobs and not more and better leads. Because more leads in this case is from instant price and quote declined estimates. I want more accepted jobs. I'm going to do that in Exchange for a. The lack of not getting some people's information because they don't want to click submit. So I could speak on that for hours probably, honestly, because there's so much data around this. But the reason everyone gets very, very hyper fixated and rightfully so. I want every lead as well. But what we don't realize is there's a huge. Get this. Okay, I think I mentioned this before. There is a 30% abandonment as soon as you ask for someone's address on a form. And so if I'm going to do that and then ask them to click submit, I'm losing 30% of people before they see the price. So are there gonna be 30% of people that decline the quote and then I don't even see their information? Yes, that could potentially happen. But I want everyone to see the price because otherwise I'm losing out on my best customers that are like, hey, I don't wanna submit my information. I don't know where the submit button is gonna take me. Is this just a matter of like, okay, thank you for submitting your information. We'll get a quote to you. Like, did they actually kind of like bait and switch me with saying it was instant, instant price. I want to actually deliver on what it says on my ad, which is I'm going to give you instant price within two minutes. And if you make it, if you hide that behind a wall of. You got to get your information first. It looks very. It feels slimy.

Aaron. Aaron from Hope Lawns. A couple questions regarding the Leads Partner program. How do you handle the customer's acknowledgment of or approval with passing that information over the partner? How do you handle the customer's acknowledgment or approval with passing their info? Yeah, so, okay, so just, just for a side note, Aaron's talking about Augusta Leads. This is basically a program separate from Copilot completely. It's essentially where any lead that we can't service, we are now offering to other people inside of Augusta Leads partner program. So we vet you, we make sure it's insurance, your licensing, and then we keep track of your service area, what service you offer, et cetera. So you go check that out. I want to make this a sales pitch for that. Um, the video kind of goes over what that entails on the website. But in terms of, to answer your question directly, Aaron, how we handle this is we actually tell them on the phone what we're doing. We tell them, hey, we have a really good partner. Partner relationship with another company locally that does that service or services your area because we don't. And so let me go ahead and get that information to my, your information to my manager and then we are going to go ahead and set you up and we'll do a three way introduction with the partner. Number two, do you allow the partner to decide whether or not they want the lead or simply send it and charge card on file, payment on file? We already have a set set of contractors we either sub work out to or refer irrigation, etc. We like to have a similar partner program. Thank you. Yes, I kind of talked about this earlier previous question. I think until you have a significant number of leads coming in like we're talking, we have hundreds every week that we are, we basically can't service. It becomes actually cost prohibitive to even set up this program in terms of like having the forms having service areas, a department and you have to get the lead to the partner as fast as possible. Like if it's not within a matter of a couple hours that lead gets cold. So we actually give away leads for free. If, if in the leads program for whatever reason if we don't get to him within 24 hours he's given away for free because in my opinion that the lead becomes cold. So it also it's difficult to do this right in your local market because you're going to have to have people on the weekends we have people overnight, we're staffed 20 plus hours a day at command center so it's easier for us to pull that off. So but you could absolutely do this locally. Just just know like from a volume perspective of how many leads you're going to be getting in to do this becomes a little bit cost like cost prohibitive cost. So much like monitor all their service areas, keep track of other vet, you vet all of them, et cetera. But yeah, and then we just run it through copilot. So we have a copilot account, we set up all of our partners in there, we can charge them through there, etc.

Mark says from Extra Mile Lawn Care I have the domain extra mile longcare.net.com is taken and I'm about to create my website. However I remember in a different video you said that net is not as good as dot com for SEO. Should I stick with the net, change it to extra mile longer mn.com Minnesota or change my business name to something else to match. Extra Mile Lawn Care is a DBA and I don't have trucks or uniforms branded yet. So a name change wouldn't be a huge deal. Although I would rather not go that route unless truly necessary. Thanks.

I would look for things like extramile lawn.com extramile lawns.com extramile landscaping.com extramile m n.com try shortening it down a little bit but you want to go dot com. You really do. From a domain extension perspective.

That is what I recommend. So from an SEO nets are just not looked as have as much authority or reputation. Can you still rank? Yes. Same with dot orgs. But dot coms are going to just be kind of the standard.

I don't know if I change my business name over and take off decals or uniforms over that.

I honestly I probably would to be perfect. I personally would do that because you just you want so much of your leads flow coming from Google and from online that is for free essentially once you have your website built that it gets worth it's worth the hassle Kevin from Lawn Domination Any update on chemical tracking in Copilot? So Kevin, I'll know if you have done chemical tracking. There is chemical tracking inside of Copilot. There really can button gets the wind speed and the temperature etc. There's a several things that are coming in terms of wait list that would probably be helpful and then packages down the road. But a lot of what we are planning for in terms of chemicals is going to be like for next spring rush that there's several features that we have talked to a lot of members about that they see inside real green and other softwares that are built just for spray like sprays and other software that is going to be added. But I do think that even the wait list next month will be something that will be helpful and then we're going to have add to that down the road in terms of packages etc. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know if you're talking about like is it possible chemical tracking? Yes it is. You can tap the button immediately capture the data and we use a weather extension for that. But there'll be more added to it towards the end of this year. Riley Tenney from Tenney Lawn and Landscape I scale my business back from three trucks to one due to not being profitable from poor systems. I'm trying to start over and build a better foundation. Would it be a better would it be a poor idea to hire someone now with GM potential and overpay him $25 for the position with the thought of him moving into a GM position in the next year or Two or should I just hire a base level worker and hire for GM when needed? There's two things. First off, I would not hire someone right now. When you have one truck and basically be promising the potential of a gm, you want it to be where you choose a general manager at the time when that position is needed and you choose the best candidate instead of promising this person now, now what you could do say, hey, I don't have. I think you have huge potential. I would love to be able to in two, three, four years down the road make someone a general manager here. And I'm not promising that, but I do think you have that kind of potential right now though. The only position I have available is it is a, to use your words, a base level worker. And here's what the pay looks like. I'm not promising in the future, but just know we are going to grow and I do want to eventually. I have a general manager and I would love that for you, for that to be you. But I'm not going to promise it because I don't want to set your expectations that falsely. That's what the conversation I'd be having.

But you just don't want to hire someone, give them a whole bunch of promises and then you're on the shot clock of delivering on those because otherwise they call you a liar. Cody from Pro Skate Lawn care and landscaping. We did 235,000 last year in lawn care and $100,000 in winter services. Should we be adding our now rev. Adding our now I'm guessing mo revenue. Should we be adding our now revenue into our numbers and projections each year? Oh, I think it means snow. Okay. We did 235k last year in lawn care and $100,000 in winter services. Should be adding our snow revenue in our numbers and projections each year. Snow grosses 100k each year but it's only me and other owner. We do not plan to grow it or should we treat it as a separate business? I just still roll it in. You can always say like look, the reason that our winter was better was because we had more snow when reason it was not as good was because we had less snow. And you're basically using winter services, I. E. Snow it sounds like as your fix for off the off season. So I'm not opposed to this. This is basically tier 3 inside the workshop and that is an adjacent service that you do that has an inverse demand curve of your core services which is lawn care. So I'm not opposed to this. If you're able to produce 100 grand. That's like 50 of what you make during the during the mowing season you're able to make during the off season. That's fantastic. You likely can cure seasonitis and not have any seasonality problems. For anyone watching that had no idea what I'm talking about. Go to mikey.comworkshop. it walks you through how to solve the Q4 collapse which is the off season. Cody from Proscape Also the last question of the day. You're doing everyday direct mail through postal service for spring rush sending out 15,000 flyers. May 10th. We started mowing last year. What is a good time to send them out? Should we send 5k at a time to less than phone calls at once? What return date would you see on what return rate do you see on these? I believe on 3K last year we were around 25 to 30 customer acquisition cost with paying postal. Thanks for everything you do. Cost us 4 cents a flyer and 17 cents to put out through postal but they're all out in three days. I would spread them out a little bit. If you had this kind of return, which is fantastic by the way. That's really, really good. I would keep doing more of this. That means that like you're having almost a 1% response rate which is phenomenal. For every door direct mill. I would spread out by at least a week or two just because you don't want to skunk out and then because like all of a sudden you put them out and the next day it rains like crazy. No one think about it. So I would probably do this in three tranches of 5,000 over the course of three weeks. I would target my highest priority 5,000 customers three times. So I would also do door hangers that same 5,000. I would also do yard signs in that same 5,000. I just really try to penetrate boil the puddle as we say. All right everyone, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your weekend. The next time you see me likely that it will be that the customer portal with estimates will have been released. It'll be our first feature in a year since stopping feature development and really focusing the stability of the system. But now that that is in place and wrapping up the last couple installments of that, we are ready to go. So over the next few months, as I said last week, we have gone slow so we can go fast. There's going to be a lot coming down the pipe. Appreciate the customer advisory board everyone that speaks to the product team to give feedback on the early cycles and the iterations of those of those products and those features. So thank you very much but we're going to get back on board here. We also a couple big hires this past week that joined the team. Lee and Mike, two engineers, joined the team next week is a really, really big hire from a leadership perspective. An engineering team that has worked at a public company and is going to be our head of engineering and moving forward in the future, more and more of a leadership role. He's been working with us for a long time at Copilot on a part time basis but I'm really excited to bring him on full time and he's leaving the other company to join us and so it's really important for the stability of the system, the long term technical roadmap. And so I think over the next few months you're going to see kind of like what all the past year of back end developments and infrastructure changes and stability has been doing. It will allow us to really move things forward quickly. So appreciate everyone's patience over this past year. It has been painful for all of us, including myself, but I really believe that over the next few months all that effort and work on the back end will pay off as we start to see front end changes. And so I look forward to sharing the first of those with you over the next couple weeks. Love you all. Hope you have a fantastic rest of your weekend and we will see you next week. Take care.